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- Hugh Wood
Cantata (1989)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by the 5th European Conference on Clinical Oncology (ECCO5)
- 2(pic)22(bcl)2/2110/hp/str
- SATB
- 12 min
- D.H. Lawrence
Programme Note
Composed in memory of his daughter, Hugh Wood’s elegiac Cantata for chorus and chamber orchestra is based on a poem by D.H. Lawrence that might almost have been written for the purpose: Jenny Wood was murdered whilst on a walking tour of Germany in a "frosted September" in 1988, one week before her twenty-seventh birthday - so "shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom, now never to be".
Yet despite the unimaginable horror of this appalling tragedy, the music conveys an exquisite serenity, moving from the low-set chromatic darkness of its opening, "In Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas", to the fulfilling light of the final cadence that quietly builds through a succession of perfect fifths to complete a chord spanning more than six octaves.
The work begins with a solo flute introducing a four-note motif (expanded and completed by solo viola, trumpet, and a barely perceptible shimmer of tremolando strings) whose overlapping thirds suggest a major/minor ambivalence that is to colour and shape the choral and orchestral harmony throughout; it also acts as a recurring melodic thread. Following a quasi parlando setting of the two opening lines of the poem, the flute motif is taken up by the chorus in a gently rocking counterpoint of both words and music at the start of the first verse proper: beginning at "Bavarian gentians", this little phrase propels the music upwards and outwards through a gradual crescendo towards the end of the third line - where the first hint of the cadential fifths is heard to underline the unaccompanied sounding of the word "blue" (as well as the ensuing "day", "daze", "blue" and "light"). An expanded version of this same phrase returns to from the radiantly full-voiced climax on "Reach me a gentian" at the start of the second verse. From this point on, the writing becomes both more spacious and more transparent; as if in a distant mirror image of the first section, the restless counterpoints of the opening gradually recede, eventually giving way to a scarcely accompanied homophony. A solo soprano leaves the Persephone "but a voice", alone sounding the topmost point of a high B natural. The descent of "darkness invisible" then parts to reveal a penultimate blaze of triumph "among the splendour of torches" whose floral light remains to shine through the tranquillity of the concluding bars.
Written between April and July 1989, the Cantata lasts about twelve minutes and is scored for double woodwind and horns, trumpet, trombone, harp and strings.
Yet despite the unimaginable horror of this appalling tragedy, the music conveys an exquisite serenity, moving from the low-set chromatic darkness of its opening, "In Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas", to the fulfilling light of the final cadence that quietly builds through a succession of perfect fifths to complete a chord spanning more than six octaves.
The work begins with a solo flute introducing a four-note motif (expanded and completed by solo viola, trumpet, and a barely perceptible shimmer of tremolando strings) whose overlapping thirds suggest a major/minor ambivalence that is to colour and shape the choral and orchestral harmony throughout; it also acts as a recurring melodic thread. Following a quasi parlando setting of the two opening lines of the poem, the flute motif is taken up by the chorus in a gently rocking counterpoint of both words and music at the start of the first verse proper: beginning at "Bavarian gentians", this little phrase propels the music upwards and outwards through a gradual crescendo towards the end of the third line - where the first hint of the cadential fifths is heard to underline the unaccompanied sounding of the word "blue" (as well as the ensuing "day", "daze", "blue" and "light"). An expanded version of this same phrase returns to from the radiantly full-voiced climax on "Reach me a gentian" at the start of the second verse. From this point on, the writing becomes both more spacious and more transparent; as if in a distant mirror image of the first section, the restless counterpoints of the opening gradually recede, eventually giving way to a scarcely accompanied homophony. A solo soprano leaves the Persephone "but a voice", alone sounding the topmost point of a high B natural. The descent of "darkness invisible" then parts to reveal a penultimate blaze of triumph "among the splendour of torches" whose floral light remains to shine through the tranquillity of the concluding bars.
Written between April and July 1989, the Cantata lasts about twelve minutes and is scored for double woodwind and horns, trumpet, trombone, harp and strings.
Scores
Vocal score